As some of you might remember, I wrote a review on Windows Vista when I purchased by new Dell Laptop. Should be around 9 months back and it is here. With 9 months of hardship, with this beasty operating system (yes Vista is 15GB and XP is 1.5GB), I called Dell support for my legal downgrade rights. Yes!, I own Windows Vista Business, and this is what the customer support agent told me.
This is an automated email sent from Dell Chat. The following information is a log of your session. Please save the log for your records.
Your session ID for this incident is 84530.
Time Details
04/01/2008 05:38:32PM Session Started with Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar)
04/01/2008 05:38:32PM Mugunth: “Windows Vista -”
04/01/2008 05:38:40PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “Hi Muguth”
04/01/2008 05:38:46PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “thank you for contacting dell”
04/01/2008 05:39:19PM Mugunth: “Hi… I just saw this, http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/2/3/d23b9533-169d-4996-b198-7b9d3fe15611/downgrade_chart.doc”
04/01/2008 05:39:24PM Mugunth: “from Microsoft’s website…”
04/01/2008 05:39:48PM Mugunth: “that, OEM versions of Windows Vista Business can be downgraded to XP Professional…”
04/01/2008 05:40:18PM Mugunth: “I wanted to know two things… regarding this…”
04/01/2008 05:40:32PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “ok”
04/01/2008 05:41:13PM Mugunth: “Is it possible to re-convert that XP to Vista at a later stage… (say when drivers are available)..? and will my current copy of Office 2007 (activated under vista) work on XP?”
04/01/2008 05:43:43PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “Mugunth let me check 1 moment”
04/01/2008 05:44:04PM Mugunth: “ok…”
04/01/2008 05:50:39PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “Muguth, ive check”
04/01/2008 05:50:48PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “the 2007 can run under XP”
04/01/2008 05:51:05PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “however for your system 1420 is build for Vista”
04/01/2008 05:51:11PM Mugunth: “Yes..”
04/01/2008 05:51:22PM Mugunth: “but drivers for nVidia is not working well…”
04/01/2008 05:51:25PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “the driver for the CXP will not be availbe completely”
04/01/2008 05:51:35PM Mugunth: “CXP means?”
04/01/2008 05:51:39PM Mugunth: “XP?”
04/01/2008 05:51:57PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “yes XP”
04/01/2008 05:52:09PM Mugunth: “which all drivers are not available?”
04/01/2008 05:53:28PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “The Motherboard controller”
04/01/2008 05:53:42PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “the dell notebook system software”
04/01/2008 05:55:22PM Mugunth: “wont the drivers for vostro 1400 work on this?”
04/01/2008 05:56:50PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “it will but the vostro is not 100% similar to the inspiron in term of the system board”
04/01/2008 05:57:18PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “it will work as already being use by many system”
04/01/2008 05:57:26PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): “but with the reservation”
04/01/2008 05:58:20PM Session Ended
If you require further assistance, please visit us at support.ap.dell.com
Firstly, I was offed, by the sudden disconnection by the agent. Secondly, though Microsoft offeres legal downgrade rights, the OEM builders do not. Though they say we are selling Windows XP even after June 30 or whatever stupid date, these idiots are selling XP only on low end PCs.
The next most important point is that, support for the operating system is not available through Microsoft for OEM copies of Vista. They replied me that, for OEM copies, please contact your PC manufacturer. The OEM manufacturer told me that, I did not purchase operating system support and hence, I’ve to resort to forums and newsgroups for getting support. If I’ve to resort to forums, why the hell should I spend so much money on this stupid PC? A mac comes with hardware and software support for slightly higher price. The higher price is warranted by the high quality software. This windows box I got came with a useless laptop integrated webcam driver that does displays a picture in picture of the same frame and will not allow me to turn it off unless I buy the “pro” version. Contrastingly iChat is a great app that allows a variety of customizations and backdrops, ppt/pdf sharing like a video conference and so on… Same goes with nVidia driver. It knows nothing but to crash. I naively thought that BSODs were a “feature” of Windows 95/98. With Vista, Microsoft introduced this “cool” feature yet again. My XP machine never BSODed. However vista is not as stable and it’s primarily because of the faulty nVidia driver.
Here are some screen shots of the driver problem.
“The display driver nvlddmkm stopped unexpectedly and has recovered”. What the hell is expected out of the end-user? Bang your heads on the keyboard and restart?
Click on the picture to view it large, you could see pixellated images of my desktop. the pixellated desktop dissolves like the powerpoint’s dissolve animation… Cool feature… lol… 
Hey, comeon, where is my wallpaper? And why should this driver crash when I play Quake III deathmatch??? Ok, I don’t expect my PC to be rock solid and allow me to play Crysis or BioShock. But I should be able to play atleast Quake III Arena, a decade old, yet popular game.
This display driver problem is augmented by the new Desktop Composition Engine. Previous versions of Windows, if I understand correctly, used GDI to render the desktop. Windows Vista uses Direct 3D which in-turn taxes the graphics processor and the driver heavily. This nVidia driver is not able to support that intensive graphics which is why the rate of crash is higher in Vista. May be in Windows XP, if the display driver is very badly written, only games crash. Here, the WDM, the desktop composition engine crashes and makes life miserable.
I also posted a video on youtube on how badly a desktop can look with such a poorly written driver.
Here it is…
Probably, I’ll switch to a mac after Mac OS X 10.6 is released if it’s announced in WWDC 2008 or else by July. Sick with vista in 6 months… 
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